Where’s the money?
In 2015, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio launched what he called a revolutionary approach to mental health care. ThriveNYC, a sprawling initiative overseen by First Lady Chirlane McCray, promised to transform how America’s largest city addressed mental illness, substance abuse, and homelessness. The price tag was staggering: initially projected at $850 million over four years, with spending eventually ballooning beyond $1 billion.
Today, years after de Blasio left office, a troubling question lingers: Where did all that money go?
The answer, according to city officials, oversight bodies, and frustrated council members who demanded accountability, remains maddeningly unclear. What began as an ambitious mental health program has become a cautionary tale about government spending, accountability, and the dangers of placing enormous public resources under opaque management structures.
The Foundation of Concern
The controversy centers not on theft or embezzlement, but something potentially more problematic for taxpayers: a near-total failure to track outcomes, measure success, or even clearly account for how hundreds of millions of dollars were allocated across dozens of programs.
City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced in March 2019 that he would conduct a comprehensive investigation into ThriveNYC’s finances. The program had spent $850 million since its 2015 implementation but had yet to report meaningful results.
The numbers themselves told a confusing story. City Hall’s budget showed $594 million in spending, while the Independent Budget Office calculated $816 million—a discrepancy of $222 million that officials attributed to different programs being counted in each calculation.
A Program Without Metrics
Perhaps most damning was the program’s inability to demonstrate effectiveness. When McCray appeared before the City Council in February 2019, members left the hearing more confused than when they entered. Councilman Ritchie Torres stated bluntly: “We know as little about the program after the hearing as we knew before the hearing. There is no evidence it’s working.”
ThriveNYC director Susan Herman testified that the program employed 400 benchmarks to measure effectiveness but admitted those metrics were still “being refined.” Neither Herman nor McCray could tell council members how many people were on Thrive’s payroll.
The Manhattan Institute reported that McCray could not even clearly explain what ThriveNYC’s budget covered or provide concrete data showing the program’s impact on New York’s mental health crisis. When pressed, she offered vague assurances that all spending benefited every New Yorker because it was difficult to determine what percentage of the population was seriously mentally ill.
The Comptroller’s Findings
In May 2019, Comptroller Stringer issued preliminary findings that painted a troubling picture. Among 41 ThriveNYC initiatives, fewer than half had completed or planned evaluations, and only 12 had reported outcome measures.
The comptroller’s office found numerous inconsistencies within the budget information the administration provided. Programs appeared and disappeared from ThriveNYC’s umbrella without a clear explanation. The initiative failed to regularly update budget information on its website and hadn’t reported actual spending numbers for fiscal year 2019.
Stringer placed ThriveNYC on his agency watch list, reserved for city programs that fail to deliver measurable results, accounting for their spending. His office noted that the program failed to provide clear reasoning for why certain mental health programs fell under ThriveNYC while similar programs did not.
Where the Money Went—Sort of
Investigations revealed some concrete examples of questionable spending. Approximately $100 million went to “diversion centers” intended to treat the mentally ill instead of sending them to jail. These centers, however, went largely unused.
The program spread funding across numerous city agencies and nonprofit organizations. Council members complained they saw no visible ThriveNYC presence in their districts despite the quarter-billion-dollar annual budget. Councilman Chaim Deutsch stated he should already be “sick of ThriveNYC” with such funding levels, but hadn’t seen any outreach efforts in his district.
The Nepotism Question
Critics raised concerns about the appropriateness of placing a mayor’s spouse—with no professional background in mental health—in charge of a billion-dollar public health initiative. McCray, a former speechwriter and activist, had no credentials in mental health administration or public health policy.
In January 2022, Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis called for a Department of Investigation probe into “any waste, fraud or abuse” within ThriveNYC. In her letter to DOI Inspector General Clinton Daggan, she wrote that tax dollars were “effectively wasted, leaving us with lasting health and safety crises.”
The Aftermath
Despite the controversy, ThriveNYC was made permanent by executive order in 2021, rebranded as the Office of Community Mental Health, and allocated an additional $115 million. The decision came even as questions about the original program’s effectiveness remained unanswered.
According to recent reporting, the spending was ultimately accounted for in a technical sense, but there was no meaningful tracking of how effectively the money was used, and inconsistencies remained in how funding was labeled within the city’s budget.
Lessons in Accountability
The ThriveNYC controversy illustrates a fundamental problem in government spending: money can be “accounted for” on ledgers while remaining functionally invisible in terms of outcomes and impact. No evidence suggests criminal wrongdoing or personal enrichment. Instead, the story reveals something perhaps more troubling—a massive public initiative that spent over a billion dollars without establishing clear goals, measuring progress, or demonstrating results.
For taxpayers who watched New York’s mental health crisis worsen even as spending increased, the question isn’t just where the money went. It’s whether anyone in charge ever really knew—or cared to find out.